looking for wonder in everyday life

The Dancing Bear

I love my job as an educational assistant, I love seeing the students have those aha moments, those lightbulb moments when some bit of information just clicks in their brain and they get it … and they know it and you know it and a moment of mutual celebration is had …

because, for some, learning can be so hard.

and sometimes the teaching, the assisting can be so hard too.

In the work I get to do, it is so easy to get frustrated when a student’s light bulb is not flickering, when there are more uh oh than aha moments, when their academic discouragements have reached beyond their brain and into their very souls.

Recently I met a student. He entered our classroom life with the distractibility of a dog when a squirrel crosses it’s path, a body that moves constantly to the music of his mind, little verbal impulse control and a disdain for pencil to paper unlike any I have seen in sixteen years in this field.

Usually, such a student is discouraged, hates school, equates learning with failure, knows administration better than classroom teachers and their soul is irreparably crushed.

Not this dancing bear of a fourteen year old young man!

He entered our classroom moving to his own beat, with a relaxed saunter, a quick smile, a gentle heart … and his soul intact.

He seems to know that school is … just school, it’s not the main stage event.

Now that knowledge may drive those of us who work with him rather batty, but … he has been a beautiful teacher to me, this year. It is as though God is using him to remind me to slow down, to take breaks, to allow unexpected interruptions from the subject at hand, to listen to the beat in my own mind, my heart.

Two verses, when put together, describe perfectly what I feel that God is saying to me through this gentle, distracted, ever-moving, thoughtful teenage boy:

“Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chronicles 20:15) … for … “his way is perfect; The word of the Lord is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him.” (Psalms 18:30)

In those verses we are reminded to not let discouragements over battles that are in God’s hands get to us. That there is a plan, but it’s God’s plan, not ours. That he will protect us, if we would just trust him.

This student is not ‘my’ student, he is a child of God. I am required to help him learn, but not at the cost of a crushed soul.

So as I guide this young man through math, God is using him to guide me through gentle waters. It’s like the light bulb is flickering and I have had my aha moment.